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However, Kristol disagreed saying the bailouts happened in 2008 under the Bush administration and before the tea party, which he said was founded for different reasons.

“They were right to be worried about [the bailouts] and to think they were a really bad precedent, but that is not the origin of the tea party. What happened — what was the origin of the tea party 5 years ago? It wasn’t about bailouts,” Kristol said.

“Sure it was,” Maher said.

“It was not. It was about a mortgage bill. Then it was about Obamacare and then it was about the stimulus—” Kristol replied.

Maher interjected, “It was about a black president. But let’s—”

“That’s bulls—-! That is total bulls—-!” Kristol said. “You think tens of millions of people, just out there, they just—-even you don’t believe that. You’re just saying that.”

“I totally believe that,” Maher responded. “It happened a month after he took office. Suddenly white people were very upset about debt, even though [former President George W.] Bush had raised the debt way more than Obama had.”

Kristol argued that the tea party was upset with Bush as well and they were “rebelling against the Republican establishment as well as the Democratic establishment.”

“I don’t remember a tea party then,” Maher said, adding that members of the group were “suddenly” at town halls.

Jumping in, CNN political contributor Margaret Hoover said that the movement did start under Bush for fiscal reasons.

“Republicans had been trying to get people … revved up to think fiscal issues were sexy for a really long time and finally they codified behind this mass movement to really rein in federal spending. That was a good thing,” she said.

However, Hoover added “it got of the rails a little bit after 2010” and noted that Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), chairman of the House Budget Committee, was “nowhere near them.”

Maher pointed out that on one tea party website, they were not talking about debt, but rather impeaching Obama, Benghazi and Obamacare.

“I wonder if they ever really cared about the debt that much,” Maher said.

Hoover pushed back saying the group had been “co-opted.”

“It was co-opted by more organized forces that, frankly, had less and less to do with fiscal discipline and more and more to do with … whatever their pet issue was,” Hoover said.